Maybe the situation will change with a new investment of 3 billion yuan ($470 million) from GM’s joint venture. The investment goes towards a new plant dedicated to New Energy Vehicles (electric and plug-in hybrids).

Plans are bold with annual capacity of 200,000, but timeframe wasn’t announced. We don’t know which cars will be produced there either.

With China’s current push towards electrification, it’s time for GM to jump on the train.

“SAIC-GM-Wuling, a three-way joint venture with SAIC Motor Corp Ltd and Wuling Motors Holdings Ltd, began construction of the plant on Friday in the southwestern province of Guangxi.

Automakers in China are racing to build electric and hybrid cars to meet national fuel economy standards that will become increasingly strict to 2020, part of a broad effort to curb pollution that chokes many urban areas.”

The plug in revolution started in CA, then to other states as they adopted CARB standards, and then to other parts of the world. The big difference between CARB and China is that CARB is interested in clean air whereas China is interested in making the Chinese auto sector an export power.

Given we know the Chinese will steal VW’s and GM’s IP, these companies seem more willing to roll the dice. It’s not obviously a good idea.

OK, I thought it was all about saving the planet.
Anyway, for the future of this planet I would rather soon have 1 billion Chinese driving plugins. No matter from whom they stole the Technology. Then the californian soccer mom can all drive refurbished 1955 V8 landbarges if that becomes the latest fashion after Model X. It will not make a difference anyway.

What intellectual property as far as plugins are concerned ??? Your most advanced company in that field makes it available to everyone for free. There is no real intellectual property left to protect except in very tiny industry areas. Knowledge spreads way to fast nowadays. What matter more is execution, marketing, branding and most important, abilities to attract funding.

GM would disagee. They developed the Voltec powertrain. China is salivating and foaming at the mouth to steal the IP and copy and counterfit it.

“Knowledge spreads way to fast nowadays.”

It sure does, especially when you use hackers working for the People’s Army to hack into the computer systems of U.S. companies and steal their IP and tech, because you can’t or don’t want to develop competing tech for yourselves.

“What matter more is execution, marketing, branding and most important, abilities to attract funding.”

It only matters more if your country has no respect for intellectual property rights and doesn’t have to pay to license the technology from its rightful owners. When you live by the mantra of what’s yours is mine, all you’ll do is do is steal other companies technology instead of investing in your own R&D and developing your own tech. At the end of the day a thief is still a thief.

Maybe you can regale with tales of how China respects human rights, and how China is such a good steward in protecting the environment and the health of it’s citizens with their strict environmental and safety regulations.

Anyway what fascinates me is that this piece of information as boring as it might be is hugely more important for future of car electrification than the shape of the Model X rear seat. Now guess what is attracting more comments. Barely grown up kids aren’t we.

“What intellectual property as far as plugins are concerned ??? Your most advanced company in that field makes it available to everyone for free. There is no real intellectual property left to protect except in very tiny industry areas.”

This is simply not true, for at least two reasons:

(1) Tesla originally developed its electric drivetrain by licensing tech (including patents) from AC Propulsion. Since patents last 20 years, it’s entirely possible that some of those patents are still being used by Tesla.

(2) Companies often keep their most valuable IP as trade secrets, rather than patent them. Patents are available for the general public to inspect, so corporate strategy may or may not involve taking out a patent on any individual innovation. Even when a patent is taken out, the applicant may obscure how the actual product is made, by including a wide range of values for how something is made or how it works, when only a narrow range of values actually results in a functional product. For example (and I realize this isn’t the best analogy to building cars), pharmaceutical companies often include a long list of possible ingredients in medicine patents, when only a very few of those ingredients are actually used.

Tesla offered what amounted to a “free license” for its own patents (but obviously not patents it licensed from AC Propulsion or other companies), in an attempt to entice other EV auto makers to join the Supercharger network, as a corporate strategy. One that, at least so far, has not worked. But that doesn’t mean Tesla’s patents have no value.

Horsehockey. A “step behind” today is only 6 months in electronics. Patant protection and other methods are the only way to ensure that the corporation who spent the $$$$ to research and develop new technologies gets a change to earn income from them.

How can you know what the Chinese want?!?
They all have children, breathe smog and are well aware of pollution. They are more active than us going with renewable, by a large margin. They don’t need to steal anything. We are in 2015 and the Chinese have come a long way. They have many green car makers of their own, and don’t give me that crap about safety tests, get over it, they are now at our level. Don’t live in the past.

“The big difference between CARB and China is that CARB is interested in clean air whereas China is interested in making the Chinese auto sector an export power.”

Apparently you haven’t seen any of the news reports about the shocking amount of air pollution in Chinese cities, so bad that many commuters wear breathing masks outdoors.

China has a pretty strong motive to improve air quality. That’s why the Chinese central government issued a mandate that 30% of all new purchases of government vehicles must be alternative fuel vehicles.

But yeah, Chinese businesses certainly want to sell cars in foreign markets. Not necessarily plug-in EVs, though… which comprise only 1% of the total market.

“The big difference between CARB and China is that CARB is interested in clean air whereas China is interested in making the Chinese auto sector an export power.”

Why?

Do you really think that people in china are not able to see that their enviroment and therefor their life quality is suffering from pollution created by ICE?

Is that your picture of chinese people?

Wow! OK you could claim, that appr. 100 million chinese are analphabets, but that also means that there are quite a lot of people who can actually even READ! Can you imagine that? Btw. in china you are analphabet, if you can read or write less than 1500 letter/words (they have a different language… did you know that?) Really what is the picture of china in your head? Have you been there?

Favorable governmental policies for ev makers partnered with Chinese companies, will give GM a leg up on the huge market in China. A positive for GM.
The positives for China are that it needs to go all electric like yesterday to help assuage their horrible air pollution problem, and a couple of Chinese auto-makers that possibly produce a decent car.

The central committee wants their people to buy vehicles made in the PRC, not Japan, not the U.S. not Europe.

Negatives. For one are you doing business with China, but that is enough of a negative in itself, to possibly outweigh all the positives.

So China gets a restyled Bolt with different front end. This one looks more production intent, than the original concept. No glass roof, and that ugly “Malabu-esque” grill goin’ on. Still has the “Tesla” inspired door handles though. 😉